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SENTENCE OF THE DAY – Charlie Hurt: “So, what does somebody have to do to get fired around here?” http://bit.ly/10XpXwO

SOME DEMS BEGIN TO DISTANCE THEMSELVES -- Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) discussed the AP phone records on “Morning Joe”: “I don’t think anyone truly believes that the president has given us a sufficient answer … You just can’t raise the flag and expect to salute it every time … [T]he same thing applies to the IRS. … What did he know and when did he know it?” –Kevin Robillard

BITE DU JOUR: Sen. Marco Rubio, last night on “The O’Reilly Factor”: “We have seen … three different incidents that basically use the government as an instrument of political activity to target your political opponents, to make life difficult for the people that are saying things that you don’t like … These are things you typically see in the Third World … By the way, the curiosity in all this is how the press wanted to ignore Benghazi. … But when it touches them, now this thing is ‘the next Watergate.’”

WHICH PUNDIT will be the first to say the West Wing needs “a David Gergen figure”?

THE BIG PICTURE – “D.C. turns on Obama” -- “Behind the Curtain” column by Mike Allen and Jim VandHei: “Obama’s aloof mien and holier-than-thou rhetoric have left him with little reservoir of good will, even among Democrats. And the press, after years of being accused of being soft on Obama while being berated by West Wing aides on matters big and small, now has every incentive to be ruthless … ‘It feels like they don’t know what they’re here to do,’ a former senior Obama administration official said. ‘When there’s no narrative, stuff like this consumes you.’ … ‘He has never taken the Democratic chairs up to Camp David to have a drink or to have a discussion,’ [a] longtime Washingtonian said. ‘You gotta stroke people, and talk to them. It’s like courting: you have to send flowers and candy and have surprises. It’s a constant process.’ … The long-term danger is that the political system and the public start to view the president, his motives and ideas through a more skeptical lens.” http://politi.co/ZZA6u9

OBAMA’S IMAGE – “Once a beacon, Obama under fire over civil liberties,” by Reuters’ Joan Biskupic and David Ingram: “Obama has faced accusation after accusation of impinging on civil liberties, disappointing his liberal Democratic base and providing fodder for rival Republicans as he deals with the realities of office. … Harvard University law professor Laurence Tribe, a professor, mentor and longtime supporter of Obama, said his famous former student was facing the realities of being president. Tribe wrote in an email to Reuters that on campus, ‘Barack Obama could live in a world unclouded by bureaucratic and political obstacles. As President, however, Barack Obama needs to impose his basic beliefs and priorities on the vast bureaucracy. ... His failings, in my view, have much more to do with whatever he has permitted to take place under the supposed oversight of (individual Cabinet secretaries) than they have to do with his own constitutional understanding and commitments.’’ http://reut.rs/YUPLja

THE LONG VIEW – “Obama's dangerous new narrative,” by Alexander Burns and John F. Harris: “No contemporary American politician has benefited more from the power of good storytelling than Barack Obama. … So presumably no one understands more vividly than Obama and his close aides just how … potentially paralyzing his situation has become … [These episodes] didn’t merely happen on his watch but were in important ways caused by his watch. And for the first time, this anti-Obama storyline … might seem reasonable to people who are not already rabid anti-Obama partisans. … For five years, this president has been making the case that a growing and activist government has good intentions, and can carry these intentions out with competence. Conservatives have warned that government is dangerous, and even good intentions get bungled in the execution…. [T]he IRS uproar, the Justice Department leak investigations, the Benghazi tragedy and the misleading attempts to explain it, and the growing problems with implementation of health care reform all bolster the conservative worldview.

“To stain reputations, presidential controversies usually need some kind of powerful connection to the style and values of the person occupying the Oval Office. Watergate … flowed directly from Nixon’s paranoia and contempt for law. No one who knew Bill Clinton in the decades before he became president would have been surprised that his second-term scandal involved weaknesses of the flesh. Under George W. Bush, the misjudgments at the outset of the Iraq War reflected an instinct for certitude and a disdain for dissenting views that started at the top. In Obama’s case, the narrative emerging from this tumultuous week goes something like this: None of these messes would have happened under a president less obsessed with politics, less insulated within his own White House and less trusting of government as an institution. … The fact that these controversies all arrive simultaneously could also help Republicans pass a fairness test that previously has thwarted them.” http://politi.co/10y0ryk

THE FIRST ACTUAL EMAILto be posted from the Benghazi talking-points chain, obtained by CNN’s Jake Tapper, is from Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes: “There is a ton of wrong information getting out into the public domain from Congress and people who are not particularly informed. Insofar as we have firmed up assessments that don’t compromise intel or the investigation, we need to have the capability to correct the record, as there are significant policy and messaging ramifications that would flow from a hardened mis-impression.” http://bit.ly/10pddTZ

--VIETOR CAMEO: Playbook was briefed on notes taken by congressional staff during a brief “in camera” viewing of the talking-points emails. Two of the emails include references to conversations with Tommy Vietor, then the National Security Staff spokesman.

GOOD NEWS FOR 1600 -- WSJ A2, "Deficit Is Shrinking Quickly," by Damian Paletta: “The Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday the federal deficit is expected to shrink to $642 billion in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, narrowing from the agency's estimate of $845 billion three months ago and sharply lower than last year's $1.087 trillion shortfall. The agency attributed the drastic shift to higher-than-expected individual and corporate tax payments, due in part to growth and higher rates that kicked in at the beginning of the year … After four straight years of $1 trillion deficits, the country's fiscal picture is changing. A slowly recovering economy, cuts in government spending driven by periodic budget clashes, and higher taxes have narrowed the gap between what the government brings in and what it spends.

“These developments have virtually halted deficit-reduction talks because politicians suddenly find they have breathing room before the next deadline requiring negotiations between political parties locked in disagreement over vastly different budget priorities. … While the deficit is shrinking, the CBO said the federal debt—all the borrowing accumulated by the government over the years—is expected to dip slightly and then begin climbing in 2019, remaining above 70% of GDP. Over the past 40 years, debt as a share of GDP has averaged 39%. ‘Such high and rising debt later in the coming decade would have serious negative consequences,’ the CBO said.” Free in Google; type in headlinehttp://on.wsj.com/10XvHXq

--THE BIG IDEA -- “The Facts Are In and Paul Ryan Is Wrong,” by New York mag’s Jonathan Chait: “The first is the collapse of intellectual support for the notion that immediate austerity can boost economic growth. The second is a growing consensus that health-care-cost inflation is slowing for deep structural reasons, rather than having undergone a mere temporary dip from the recession. These trends have something in common: They blow to smithereens the intellectual foundations of the Obama-era Republican policy agenda.” http://nym.ag/17uhAS1

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ABOUT LAST NIGHT: Valerie Jarrett was at the Four Seasons Chicago as her mother, childhood-development pioneer Barbara Taylor Bowman, was honored at the anniversary gala of Family Focus, a Chicago group promoting “the well-being of children from birth by supporting and strengthening their families.” Education Secretary Arne Duncan gave the keynote and Jarrett’s daughter, Laura, delivered a tribute to her grandmother -- an evening the family will never forget. Bowman, a faculty founder and professor at the Erikson Institute, a Chicago-based graduate school in child development, received the Bernice Weissbourd Award for Family Support for “lasting impact in the field of early childhood education.”

WHITE HOUSE TRANSITIONS: Prem Kumar has been named the National Security Staff’s senior director for the Middle East and North Africa, replacing Steve Simon. Prem has worked at the NSS since April 2009, coming from the State Department. Prior to his promotion to senior director, he served in various positions at the director level covering Israeli-Palestinian issues, Egypt, and Jordan.

PLATINUM PROPOSAL: In front of a lit-up FDR Memorial on Saturday night, George Holman, policy adviser to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, proposed to Liz Kennedy, a director in RIAA communications office, who also gets to give out Gold and Platinum awards to lucky artists. No plaque was presented, but she happily said “yes” to something else shiny.

CLICK DU JOUR: The Treasury inspector general’s report on the IRS, titled “Inappropriate Criteria Were Used to Identify Tax-Exempt Applications for Review”: “The IRS used inappropriate criteria that identified for review Tea Party and other organizations applying for tax-exempt status based upon their names or policy positions instead of indications of potential political campaign intervention. Ineffective management: 1) allowed inappropriate criteria to be developed and stay in place for more than 18 months, 2) resulted in substantial delays in processing certain applications, and … [N]o work was completed on the majority of these applications for 13 months.” http://politi.co/13krizA

--President Obama email, 8:35 p.m.: “[T]he report’s findings are intolerable and inexcusable. … I’ve directed Secretary Lew to hold those responsible for these failures accountable, and to make sure that each of the Inspector General’s recommendations are implemented quickly, so that such conduct never happens again. But regardless of how this conduct was allowed to take place, the bottom line is, it was wrong. Public service is a solemn privilege. I expect everyone who serves in the federal government to hold themselves to the highest ethical and moral standards.”

TALK-RADIO ALERT – USA Today banner, “IRS gave a pass to liberals: Tea Party groups mired in red tape as liberal groups easily got tax-exempt status,” by Gregory Korte, with Kevin Johnson: “In the 27 months that the Internal Revenue Service put a hold on all Tea Party applications for non-profit status, it approved applications from similar liberal groups, a USA TODAY review of IRS data shows. As applications from conservative groups sat in limbo, groups with obviously liberal names were approved in as little as nine months. With names including words like ‘Progress’ or ‘Progressive,’ these groups applied for the same tax status and were engaged in the same kinds of activities as the conservative groups.” http://usat.ly/180ZHbh

--WHAT THE IRS ASKED FOR -- David Nather, Tarini Parti and Byron Tau, with Lauren French: “The Internal Revenue Service asked tea party groups to see donor rolls. It asked for printouts of Facebook posts. And it asked what books people were reading. A POLITICO review of documents from 11 tea party and conservative groups that the IRS scrutinized in 2012 shows … groups were asked for resumés of top officers and descriptions of interviews … One group was asked to provide ‘minutes of all board meetings since your creation.’ Some of the letters asked for copies of the groups’ web pages, blog posts, and social media postings … [T]he American Patriots Against Government Excess was asked to provide summaries or copies of all material passed out at meetings. … Some were asked about any connection to Americans for Prosperity, a nonprofit group backed by the Koch brothers … [O]ne group [was asked if it] knew Justin Binik-Thomas … a former leader of the Cincinnati Tea Party, and clearly someone in the Cincinnati IRS office knew who he was. So when the Liberty Township Tea Party applied for tax-exempt status, the IRS threw this question into its March 2011 letter: ‘Provide details regarding your relationship with Justin Bink-Thomas.’ [sic] …

“Several conservative group leaders spoke of 18 months or more of delays, only to get missives in early 2012 demanding answers to detailed questions within a few weeks. … [T]he Richmond Tea Party.… first applied for 501(c)(4) status in December 2009, and got final approval in July 2012. … [O]ne letter — to American Patriots Against Government Excess — came under the name of Lois Lerner, the director of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations office. Lerner was the IRS official who announced last Friday the agency had singled out certain groups for review based on search terms like ‘tea party’ and ‘patriot.’ … Toby Marie Walker, the president of the Waco Tea Party, says her group applied for 501(c)(4) status in July 2010 and didn’t get a response from the IRS until February 2012 – when it sent a letter with 20 questions, including requests for printouts of its web page and social networking sites. It also wanted copies of all newsletters, bulletins and fliers, as well as any stories written about the group. … The IRS also asked for transcripts of radio shows where her group had mentioned political candidates by name – a job she figured would have cost her group $25,000.” http://politi.co/19rGtKB

--N.Y. Times lead editorial, “Spying on The Associated Press: What, besides intimidation, is achieved by searching phone records of respected journalists?”: “The records covered 20 phone lines, including main office phones in New York City, Washington, Hartford, and the Congressional press gallery. The guidelines for such subpoenas, first enacted in 1972, require that requests for media information be narrow. … The Justice Department is pursuing at least two major press investigations, including one believed to be focused on David Sanger’s reporting in a book and in The Times on an American-Israeli effort to sabotage Iranian nuclear works. These tactics will not scare us off, or The A.P., but they could reveal sources on other stories and frighten confidential contacts vital to coverage of government.” http://nyti.ms/13kUFBT

DESSERT – “Bill Hader to exit 'SNL' after 8 seasons” -- AP/N.Y.: “[T]he 34-year-old comedian will depart ‘SNL’ after this weekend's season finale. Hader joined the NBC sketch-comedy show in 2005. He has since made his mark with a range of impersonations including Al Pacino, Vincent Price, James Carville and Stefon, the hipster "Weekend Update" correspondent. Hader's films include ‘Superbad,’ ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall,’ Knocked Up’ and ‘Pineapple Express.’”

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